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Canada can kick carbon addiction

We need to use plain language to explain why the federal government approves, supports and (apparently) is prepared to help fund oil pipelines, such as Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain, for which they appear to have money to blow.

Intending the drug reference, we should instead say, bluntly, they are just doing more lines of pipe.

The government’s willingness to spend money on pipe instead of on clean water for First Nations communities, food and shelter for homeless people, proper supports for injured veterans and a long list of other national necessities seems like an addiction.

Add the irrational frenzy reflected in their defence of the Trans Mountain project — vilifying opponents, desperate to do whatever it takes to get their pipe (military options against protesters have still not been taken off the table) — and it’s clear they need some professional help to kick the habit.

We continue to be told, in increasingly frantic tones, that Canada must get its oil to the world markets. (This conveniently ignores last year’s pipeline frenzy around Keystone XL and the fact, at the moment, we are apparently getting oil to market in other ways.)

Forget the logic the Afromax tankers that can navigate the British Columbia waterways into the proposed pipeline terminus are one-quarter the size of the supertankers that can fill up, in much less time, in Texas. Forget the price of oil is lower now than it needs to be (by at least $30 a barrel) to make working the oil sands profitable.

Forget the global shift toward alternative energy, which means (even with real growth) there will be less global demand for oil in the future, not more. Forget the equally obvious point that oil sands product is lower quality than other supplies available, requiring extra refining (and higher costs) to make it usable and therefore less desirable to anyone who has an option. Forget that the country most likely in our sights as a future customer — China — is also becoming the global leader in producing alternative energy, such as solar.

All this is set aside because we need more pipe. Another line, as soon as possible — and there will be trouble if you try to get in the way of me doing my next line.

Granted, you could say as a country we are all addicted to oil, so the Liberal government is no worse than the rest of us. But that only means we all could use some professional help.

Bizarre as this might sound, perhaps Premier Brian Pallister can lead the way to a pipe-free, alternative energy, decarbonized future for all of Canada.

All he needs to do, the next time he visits his cottage in Costa Rica, is to check out what the locals are doing to kick the habit and bring back some of their ideas for rehab in his luggage, along with the usual packages of Costa Rican coffee.

Newly elected President Carlos Alvarado Quesada announced at his inauguration this month that Costa Rica is going to lead the world in decarbonizing its society. Last year, deriving most of its electricity from hydro power, Costa Rica went 300 consecutive days using a mix of renewable energy sources to power the country, breaking its record from a year earlier.

Of course, that leaves transportation — but the new president intends to tackle that head-on, too, campaigning on a platform to eliminate fossil-fuel transportation in the near future with electric vehicles and better public transportation (he arrived at the inauguration in a hydrogen-powered bus).

Using what are called “foresight scenarios” to plan toward a future everyone wants, not the one that just arrives uninvited, the agricultural sector in Costa Rica is working co-operatively toward decarbonizing everything from livestock to crop production, as soon as it can.

Manitoba could be a carbon-negative province. We could generate all our power from renewables, heat our homes and businesses the same way and slash emissions from agriculture and transportation by promoting the technology and infrastructure that already exist to do it. We could use foresight scenarios to make the province resilient in the face of climate change, instead of sitting, paralyzed, in the middle of the road, waiting to get run over.

As for the naysaying internet trolls and pipe-addicted politicians who will sneer at these ideas, I received an email recently from Manitoba’s airship visionary, Barry Prentice, that closed with a Chinese proverb I had forgotten:

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”

Next time you turn on your lights at your vacation home in Costa Rica, Premier Pallister, consider what it might mean for Manitoba if you followed that country’s lead.